Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Faith and Healing and How God is Pretty Crazy, Really

I started out this blog with three or four paragraphs about some struggles and sins and questions and wonderings and things of that sort, and then deleted them all, and started this sentence. The reason I did that is because there's a time and place for that, and I feel as though I've exhausted it recently. What I decided I really wanted to say is something pretty simple, really, which is this:

Our God is a crazy, crazy, crazy God. He does crazy things that I don't understand. He loves in ways that I can't comprehend, and he is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, wonderful God. I've been reading in Luke, and in Luke there is a story about how Jesus tells his disciples to go out and heal people. He says that they should go walk around and cast out demons and heal all diseases. He tells them that they shouldn't take anything with them; not food or clothes or money or anything.

And then the next part of the story says this: "So they began their circuit of the villages, preaching the Good News and healing the sick."

This is the way that I paraphrase this story:

One random day, Jesus told his friends to do a whole bunch of crazy things - like heal people and cast out demons and stuff that nobody really does or believes they can do. He told them that they can do it because he can do it, and they are his. And he told them not to bring things that keep people alive (money, food, clothes), because God would provide.

And then they said, "Okay," and shrugged their shoulders and walked around and did it.

This is such a crazy story to me because all I can think is: what a crazy kind of faith that is! What a crazy person to tell them to do it, and what crazy people to believe that they can, and what a crazy God to actually make it possible!

And then I think about another verse somewhere else that I know of (I can't remember which one - I want to say it's in Corinthians or something) that says that every spiritual gift has been given to us, and another one that says that even with the faith of a mustard seed, we could move mountains.

And then then I think that we could do stuff like that with the kind of faith that the disciples had. I've seen it happen! I've seen people healed, physically. When I was a kid, a friend of my dad's fell off of a roof, and he broke his leg, and I watched while my dad and his friends prayed for him, and I watched his broken leg be healed and saw him get up and jump around and rejoice because God can still heal people. I've seen kids healed at shows for sicknesses they've had for years. I've even gotten to witness healing in my dad for some of his back problems that he's had for years.

What kind of a crazy God does stuff like that? He's nuts! He's phenomenal. To think that Jesus has given us every spiritual gift, to think that he told us to keep his ministry going after he left, to think that he's not only wanting but expecting the type of faith that can move mountains... it's beyond my realm of thought, but it's exciting, too.

I'm excited to know that God is bigger than my skepticism. I'm not too prone to thinking that when a miracle happens, it actually happens. I'm pretty down to come up with another explanation for why that dude can walk even though he didn't used to be able to, or why that chick can see even though she's been blind her whole life, or why my dad's leg is even with his other leg even though it's been an inch shorter and screwing up his back his whole 55 years on this earth. It's probably a scam, you know? Take my money, I want your scam, too.

But I've seen those things, and I'm reading this book that God decided we should read that talks about stuff he did and is doing and he's still doing these kinds of things, and I believe that wholeheartedly.

And that is a miracle in and of itself.

So I don't really know if I am going to be closing this with any sort of punch line or something profound or if I'm even going to give it any sort of closure whatsoever, other than that I think the Lord is developing my faith in him more and more, and something that has come out of it is my desire to believe in and to see him do things that we don't generally believe he can do anymore, because I believe that he still can, and I believe that he still does, and I believe that he will continue to, because he wants to.

And I feel like there's a sort of revival about this kind of thing going on, at least in music - or, at least in the music that I listen to - and so maybe I just sound like "another one of those charismatic crazies." Maybe I am, but I'd like to believe that God really has the power that I tell everyone else that he has all the time, and I've finally started to be frickin stoked about the fact that I do, and that he does.

God is going to heal my dad's back. I believe it, and I'll keep on believing it regardless of whether it happens in this lifetime or not - because even if it doesn't, it'll be healed once he gets home, and God's promise will have not been broken.